Chris Welch’s AirPods Max review asks the question “Apple still doesn’t offer a lossless tier, and I have to ask, if not now, when?” I don’t think Apple is ever going to offer lossless audio, mostly because 256-kbps AAC really is good enough for most listeners.

The local news is predicting 6-8 inches of snow today in my area. Dark Sky is predicting about an inch, plus some rain. 🤷‍♂️ We’ll see, I guess.

Got the new iPad 4 and bought Reeder 5 to use on it!

A robotic kitchen for rich people is kind of a cool idea, I guess, but the setup looks pretty scary. If robots can cook, where will that leave restaurant cooks in 20 years or so, when the technology gets cheaper?

I am eagerly awaiting for the shipment of a new iPad Air 4 today.

Live: Here Are the Electoral College Results, By State. Why on earth would I want to track this live?

I took a required course in ethics this morning, and wish I could have just watched a few episodes of “The Good Place” instead.

Taylor Swift to Release New Album, ‘Evermore,’ Tonight. 👀 I guess if there’s no new Bleachers album this year I can be happy about this, which sounds like it’s “Folklore” part 2.

First impressions of the Apple AirPods Max are starting to trickle in. I am looking forward to reviews that speak more to the sound quality and less about the impractical case.

Per Susan Davis on NPR:

When earmarks were a regular feature of congressional business, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said Democrats and Republicans were able to cut more deals and pass more bills with bipartisan support.

This sounds like a bad idea at first, but it probably is actually a good one. Congress can’t pass meaningful legislation anymore, in part because there is almost no bipartisan agreement on important bills. Maybe allowing earmarks will make it easier to gain votes “across the aisle”—you know, like it used to.

Wow. Apple’s “December surprise” actually happened:

By moving into the premium headphones space, Apple will directly compete with brands like Bose, Sony, Sennheiser, AKG, Bowers and Wilkins, and others that have years of experience and a long list of products between them. Apple is going higher than just about all of them on price, but the company is riding the momentum of the AirPods and AirPods Pro, which have dominated the true wireless earbuds market.

I shouldn’t be surprised that Apple’s headphones cost more than any in my collection—and I have some pretty impressive headphones.

The headband design looks a little odd at the top. I hope the engineers sacrificed looks for comfort there.

And it’s a shame they charge via Lightning

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by Chuck Yeager and by test pilots in general. I did not know he lived to see 2020. Rest in peace.

🎵 Today’s listen: “Everything Will Change” by The Postal Service. It’s the remastered audio part of a filmed concert from 2013. Sadly, it isn’t new music, but it’s fun to hear the band play live.

It could just be end-of-the-year malaise, but I have given up on Inbox Zero. I will probably just declare email bankruptcy on January 1 and archive or delete everything in one fell swoop.

I would have thought that Bob Dylan’s entire song catalog, which he sold to Universal Music Group, would be worth more than $300 million. After all, that was the going rate for Taylor Swift’s much smaller one.

I’ve become so accustomed to global warming that I now expect December temperatures to be 40-50ºF and a sub-freezing day like today feels unusual.

🎵 Today’s listen: “My Woman” by Angel Olsen. I am a huge fan of her newer album, “All Mirrors”, so I decided to listen to her prior album. It’s pretty good, and has a strong finish, but it is not as compelling to me as “All Mirrors” is.

After about eight years of service, the right-click button on my trackball just stopped registering clicks. I guess the switch is broken. Luckily, there are two other buttons I can use, so I remapped right-click to one of the buttons on the top. I hope I can get used to it.

I enrolled in the Apple Small Business program today. I am grateful for it, even though I am among the smallest of the small developers on the platform.

Puerto Rico: Iconic Arecibo Observatory telescope collapses. I’m sad to see this observatory damaged so badly. It loomed large in my imagination as a child, mostly from magazine articles and SETI, and then the movie “Contact.”

Trump Has Discussed With Advisers Pardons for His 3 Eldest Children and Giuliani. Yep, nothing to see here. Swamp: drained! 🙄

The podcast landscape is changing apace. Spotify seems to be doing well with its exclusive podcasts and its various podcast network acquisitions. I’m of the opinion that their exclusive podcasts are, essentially, _not _podcasts, because I can’t listen to them in my preferred app, Overcast.

Apple Names App of the Year Winners. I guess this is important. I haven’t bought an app for myself all year (on iOS at least), though I am still paying for my Ulysses and Overcast subscriptions.

🎵 Some good news for fans like me: The Hold Steady Announce New Album, Share New Song.

I have blocked reddit.com at the DNS level because I can’t stop wasting time there. 😒 Now that I don’t need headphones or mechanical keyboards, I really should stop checking them out, and then getting lost in memes and other internet detritus.